As the volume of content that is consumed in a personalized fashion continues to grow, existing mechanisms for delivering content are not always able to efficiently deliver the personalized content to users. Furthermore, the presentation of the content to end users is often disorganized, resulting in a dissatisfying viewing experience for the end user. Typically, there is one type of user interface for broadcast content which is organized into channels, with a particular content item on a given channel in a particular time slot. If a storage mechanism such as a Personal Video recorder exists to save certain content from the broadcast network for replaying later, this will have a different interface. There is yet a different interface for accessing unicast content, which is typically stored content, such as video on demand. Non-stored unicast streams, such as a real-time webcam will typically have yet another interface.
Today, if a user wants to access content of different types through different types of networks, the user must take on the task of organizing what content item will be viewed when, and the user must navigate between different interfaces to find and access that content. This is frequently a task of considerable complexity, involving search for broadcast content items within a large electronic program guide or on-demand items in a large library of content, choice of a set of content items to be viewed within an available viewing period, and controlling devices to view or otherwise consume the content. If the same content item can potentially be sourced in multiple ways, or is to be consumed on multiple devices, the complexity is further increased. There is currently no automated mechanism for organizing content for presentation to an end user which makes accessing that content simple and convenient for the end user.